I have gotten a boarding request during the Christmas holiday for a repeating client who has 2 dogs. My holiday rate is $50 and night and my normal additional dog rate is $20 a night. Their dogs are pretty good but their second dog is 15 years old and has to get let out twice in the middle of the night or else he will go in my house.

I already booked the same client for Thanksgiving and didn't adjust the second dog rate. So I was just wondering if anyone raises their second dog rate during the holidays? & would it be reasonable to do it for the Christmas one even though I didn't for the Thanksgiving request?

A client wants to me to come house sit for just in the evening for 5 hours. It is during the holidays so it is charging her my holiday rate of $50 a night but since it's only for a few hours I am not sure how much to charge this client.

It is a puppy who just got surgery and will still have the cone on her head while I am there. I also need to make sure she doesn't mess with her stitches! I would love to hear from anyone about how they deal with housing sitting for a few hours?

I read the previous answers and agree with most of the points. I am curious what you ended up doing. Personally I don't think I would ever cancel on a client the day before. I'm not sure of the details of the client that booked you, but I have found that a lot of my older clients don't have smart phones or the rover app so they only see the messages when they check their email on the computer. It is very weird she didn't message back but I always like to give people the benefit of the doubt that they have busy lives and love their pets. Since she denied having a meet and greet I would have a informal mini one in your front yard to get a feel of the situation and the dogs and then you can get the care instructions. Most of the time I get my instructions in person not over the app because people don't want to type everything you need to know about their dog. However if it is a longer stay maybe I would cancel it, this is a tricky situation!

It all depends on the sitter. But you can change the radius on your profile to the maximum distance you want to travel for different services. & you can go to your profile rates and go to additional services and change your price for additional dogs, puppy rate, baths, cat care, etc. You can also charge a pickup and drop off fee for daycare and boarding clients. I did get a request for someone who needed a replacement sitter to board their dog asap but it was outside my radius (30 min drive) and i just informed them them of that and told them I would happily take the dog but I would have to charge them a higher fee to cover gas and time.

I personally charge $15 for a drop in visit for the first dog and then $8 for the second dog. If they have smaller dogs I will only charge $5 for each additional dog. My rate is pretty average for my area but some sitters do offer $5 for the second dog regardless of size. It is all about your preference. Some sitters in my area charge the same amount for a drop in visit as they do for daycare.

Definitely true I didn't think about it from that standpoint!

My old corgi got so good at not eating his pills and realized what pill pockets were very quickly.

If you don't want to give your dog food like peanut butter simply put the pill in the dogs mouth. Hold your hand gently around his mouth to keep it closed so they can't spit it out. Cup your other hand around their nose and blow strongly into their nostrils and this will make them have to swallow the pill. It kinda tickles them so they move their tongue and swallow even if they don't want to. You may have to blow into their nose a few times but it always does the trick with every dog I've tried it with

I would take plenty of photos and contact rover and the local animal police in your area. No dog should be living in those conditions and they are lucky you came into the situation.

Maybe even on the last visit leave a note expressing your concern. I understand you may not want to do this to avoid a negative review but personally I would have to talk to or meet with that owner.

I have a new request to do several drop in visits for 5 cats. They are all friendly and some super shy. I would just be doing 30 min drop ins to feed them, give them water and occasionally clean the 2 liter boxes. I normally charge $5 per cat but since 2 don't even pay me any attention and I don't have to walk them, etc I charged $15 per visit. I am still pretty new to rover so I just wanted to get other sitters advice or experience on what they charge for just watching cats. Thanks!

I am also new to rover and found this happens to me pretty often. I will have multiple requests that I quickly and politely respond to and then nothing. I've had owners say I was there number one option and then still not get a response after the initial conversation.

I find sometimes they stop the conversation once we discuss pick up and drop off times. Anything over 4 hours of the 24 hour boarding I will have to charge a little something and I find that is when they will stop answering me. Like you said they send a message to multiple sitters probably looking for a good personality but also one with the lowest cost in my opinion. My advice would be to write your policy on your website.